Envisioning a world in which every young musician is given the opportunity to succeed

My name is Zebadiah Coombs, and, in a nutshell, I’m just an ordinary teenager who wants to live up to his name. The word Zebadiah translates to “a gift from God”. For my entire life, I felt like I was useless. People didn’t like me, I wasn’t good at anything, and I didn’t have faith in myself. Now, I know better than that. I know that if I try my hardest, I can become exactly who I want to be. I can be a gift from God to my friends, my family, and to the rest of the world. I can be someone who helps others. That’s all I really want to be, and I want to use music in order to do so.

When I first became a true musician, it sparked something inside of me. Finally there was something that I was good at. At least, that’s what they told me. I still doubted myself, but it wasn’t as much as before. The power of music gave me a never before known confidence. I felt like I could do anything with this confidence, and to a point, I could/ I made friends, became a better person, and little by little, I came out of the shell that I had been living in for years.

Music is a part of me. It’s a part of my most important qualities: my kindness, my understanding, my ability to listen to others, and my creativity. Without music, I wouldn’t be who I am today. It simply wouldn’t be possible. It has become so much a part of my everyday life that imagining myself without it is scary and borderline painful.

If music helps me to be who I truly am, and I’m a person who only wants to help other people, could I use music to help people?